Banks and other institutions that provide financial services are facing increased amounts of competition and are being pressured to provide a greater diversity of services to their customers. Not too long ago when customers traveled to the bank to make all of their transactions, the bank could focus on the customer-bank teller interaction to improve the quality of services. The bank could improve the quality of service by staffing a larger number of tellers at peak times and by offering drive through services. Banks developed internal computer systems and provided their tellers with staff terminals so that the bank tellers could access the books of the bank when they were entering customer transactions.
This simplified model of banking, while still in existence, has been greatly expanded. In addition to the bank tellers, banks provide Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) so that customers can perform transactions at literally any hour of the day. The locations of the ATMs are not limited simply at the bank's branch locations but can be found, for instance, in shopping malls, airports, grocery stores, hotels, and building lobbies. Since the ATMs must access the books of the banks to allow customers to perform their transactions, banks had to provide an interface between the ATMs and the bank's internal computer system that allows the ATMs limited but secure access to the bank's books.
The model for providing financial services has been expanded even further to enable home banking. With home banking, a customer can access his or her personal account and perform transactions, such as bill paying, money transfers, etc., in the convenience of one's home through the customer's personal computer. To enable home banking, banks had to provide an interface between the bank's internal computer system and the customer's personal computers to allow limited and secure access to the bank's books. Due to the differences between ATMs and personal computers, the interface for the personal computers is typically separate and distinct from the interface provided for the ATMs.
One difficulty facing banks is that they must provide a first interface between the bank's internal computer system and the staff terminals, a second interface between the internal computer system and the ATMs, and a third interface between the internal computer system and the personal computers. Each of these interfaces or platforms adds complexity to the bank's overall computer system and each competes with the other for access to the bank's books. This added complexity is significant since the amount of resources that the bank must devote toward maintaining its computer system is increased due to these three separate platforms.
The complexity of a bank's computer system will only grow as banks continue to provide more and more services. One area of service that banks are already beginning to explore is the granting of access to the bank's books by devices other than personal computers, such as screen phones or personal data assistants (PDAs). Another area of service that banks are contemplating is the granting of access to the bank's books through the Internet, such as through an Internet service provider (ISP) or other external service provider (ESP). These additional remote devices and the connection to the ISP would further complicate the bank's internal computer system and would require the bank to devote more resources in maintaining and upgrading its computer system.
In addition to additional channels of access to the bank's books, banks have been expanding the types of services that can be accessed by a remote device. In addition to traditional checking and savings accounts transactions, banks are also enabling the paying of bills, the buying and selling stocks, the quoting of stocks, as well as other types of services through the ATMs, personal computers, or other remote devices. Each expansion into another type of service requires a significant amount of modification to the software and possibly hardware in the bank's internal computing system. These additional services, although necessary to remain competitive, require a considerable amount of work on the bank's computer system.
The complexity in offering financial services will also be compounded as more and more services are being provided in an international market. As individual national markets in the world continue to merge together, both businesses and individual customers will have an increased need and desire to access their account information from another country. The platform or platforms needed to interface with the banking systems of other countries will further tax the ability of a bank to maintain its computer system and its books.
Another difficulty facing a bank entering another country is that the bank must, in effect, create a new computer system for each country that it enters. Each country has its own unique regulatory and legal environment which dictates the manner in which financial services must be performed. The bank cannot simply duplicate a computer system operating in another country but rather must specially tailor each computer system to the regulatory and legal environment of that country. This extra amount of effort required to shape a computer system according to the rules and laws of its home country consumes more of the bank's valuable resources.
The creation of computer systems for banks in other countries is complicated by the difference in languages. Because of a language difference, the interface between the computer system and the customer, such as through a graphical user interface (GUI), will vary according to the national language or languages of a particular country. These differences in how customers interface with the bank's computing system is not limited simply to words and different alphabets but also encompass manifestations of language due to differences in culture or norms of a particular country. These manifestations of language, for instance, may dictate the selection of certain colors in a GUI, the use of a particular set of symbols, and the selection of certain audio indicators, such as beeps or other tones.
In view of a desire to allow international access to the bank's books, each computer system should also be able to receive and send communications from the other computer systems, which possibly may be in numerous languages. For instance, the bank's books which are stored in the United States may need to be accessed by a newly installed banking system in Thailand. Before this access is possible, however, the banking system in the United States may need to be modified to recognize the bank's computer system in Thailand. Consequently, with the introduction of each computer system in one country, the computer systems in all of the other countries may need to be modified accordingly.
As discussed above, banks are increasingly providing new types of access to the bank's books and are providing new services in an ever-increasing number of countries. All of these changes in services and access to services are accomplished by rewriting the application which governs all operations of the bank's internal computer system. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of the data in the bank's books and the need for total accuracy, any modification to this application must undergo an inordinate amount of testing. Since the application covers all aspects of the system, any modification to one part of the application which may cover only a minor aspect of the system can potentially have an effect on any other part of the system. The testing required for any modification, even for just a minor upgrade, must therefore be performed on the entire system.
Thus, a need exists for a computer system or method that has a reduced amount of complexity yet offers access to various remote devices and enables the expansion of access to new types of devices. A need also exists for a computer system or method that can offer new or modified services more easily with less testing. A need also exists for a computer system or method that can more easily accommodate the legal and regulatory environment of a host country and which can more easily interconnect and communicate with the systems in other countries.
Further, there is a need to get information from various types of devices, such as ATMs, to a central server, so that the automated teller system or systems can be monitored remotely. For example, the bank may have several thousand ATMs, which are hardware devices with software running in them, deployed in the field and which include many potential points of failure. The bank needs to be able to monitor and manage those devices from a central location. There is a great deal of information residing on those systems, and the bank needs to be able to get at the information and know when something goes wrong.